Message Board Activity - P99 vs Sony

[eqravenprince]

I was just curious about how our message board measured up to Sony's in thread and message count since we opened up the message board. So I took the most popular section on Sony's site "Newbie Zone" and matched it up with our "Server Chat". The results are we have over twice as many posts 125k vs 50k. And threads, almost twice as many 7k vs 4k. Draw whatever conclusion you want, I just found it interesting that we have around twice the amount of message board activity.

[acid_reflux]

eq is dying. ftp is like abandonment imo.

[sbvera13]

EQ has been dying since luclin. Although, it's been damn slow about it :P

[Diggles]

Luclin was a gut shot with a serrated knife and PoP was the whiskey and bandaging

[Trox20]

I was just curious about how our message board measured up to Sony's in thread and message count since we opened up the message board. So I took the most popular section on Sony's site "Newbie Zone" and matched it up with our "Server Chat". The results are we have over twice as many posts 125k vs 50k. And threads, almost twice as many 7k vs 4k. Draw whatever conclusion you want, I just found it interesting that we have around twice the amount of message board activity.

You sure you looked at that right....from what I'm seeing the Official forums Newbie Zone has over 382K posts with over 31k topics, and then you also have to take into account the fact that the Official forums have around 5-6 different sections (depends on how you want to divide them up) that combined would then equal what Server Chat here is used for. Hate to burst your bubble but EQLive is still doing alright for itself.

People keep saying that F2P is the death knell of a game, but you really shouldn't be surprised that companies are moving over to that model after it has pretty much resurrected a few games that all but had their plugs pulled (DDO being one of the best examples). Companies are in the business of making money so they are going to switch to a business model that appears to bring in the most money.

Unfortunately it seems that the day of the hardcore MMO; that is going to challenge you from the beginning, is pretty much over, but I blame the "Give me now I deserve everything now" generation that is coming up more than the gaming companies for that. I probably should blame the parents more because if they had taught their kids that you have to work for the best things in life then maybe they wouldn't be such spoiled little brats.

[fischsemmel]

I was just curious about how our message board measured up to Sony's in thread and message count since we opened up the message board.

But I had fun with the punctuation, Trox. I especially liked the random-ass semicolon you threw in there.

"Unfortunately it seems that the day of the hardcore MMO; that is going to challenge you from the beginning, is pretty much over, but I blame the "Give me now I deserve everything now" generation that is coming up more than the gaming companies for that."

"Sentences" like that are the reason that grammar nazis weren't extinct a long, long time ago.

[sbvera13]

I blame the companies. WoW- the barrier breaking MMO- is now roughly 7 years old. Many of the people that began with WoW are now graduating college, getting jobs, and have disposable income. They also are older, seasoned on the easy stuff, and craving something deeper. Since nothing exists to fill this need, this market simply turns to other mediums (LARPing, bars, *cough*emulators*cough*) or abandons MMO's entirely.

The first developer to market to these people and feed this craving will hit the big time overnight. Nobody is doing this though, because investors look at numbers, not ideas, and the numbers are with WoW. Sad day indeed :(

[Naerron]

i agree with trox, thinnk how many people will simply log back in again now that they don't have to pay and not even meaning to get hooked again. I know for 1 i will at least log on one of my old alts to see if anyone i know is still playing and try to bring them to P99 =)

[Ikonoclastia]

You sure you looked at that right....from what I'm seeing the Official forums Newbie Zone has over 382K posts with over 31k topics, and then you also have to take into account the fact that the Official forums have around 5-6 different sections (depends on how you want to divide them up) that combined would then equal what Server Chat here is used for. Hate to burst your bubble but EQLive is still doing alright for itself.

People keep saying that F2P is the death knell of a game, but you really shouldn't be surprised that companies are moving over to that model after it has pretty much resurrected a few games that all but had their plugs pulled (DDO being one of the best examples). Companies are in the business of making money so they are going to switch to a business model that appears to bring in the most money.

Unfortunately it seems that the day of the hardcore MMO; that is going to challenge you from the beginning, is pretty much over, but I blame the "Give me now I deserve everything now" generation that is coming up more than the gaming companies for that. I probably should blame the parents more because if they had taught their kids that you have to work for the best things in life then maybe they wouldn't be such spoiled little brats.
The traditional hardcore gamer is still out there, just more people are using pcs because theyve become so easy to use and essential to have. Now we have way more people online who would never have come near a pc or hard game in the old days.

All we need is a developer to realise, while there may be 10 million players willing to play an easy handholding game, who have to be coddled and bribed with constant content updates and gifts or theyll go to the next new shiny thing, there are a million traditional players, who if given a solid, challenging game will be long term loyal customers and still very profitable.

[GETINMYVAN]

Their 'free to play' model is a joke.

4 Classes - Warrior, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue
4 Races - Human, Erudite, Barbarian, Gnome
Coin limitation - 100 plat per level (when items in the bazaar cost thousands of plat)
Customer Service - Knowledge base only. (good luck when you need to petition a GM)
Spells - Rank 1
AA points - Maximum of 250
Shared Bank Slots - 0

Given time maybe they will understand how stupid this system is. If they really want this new business model to succeed they need to make the entire game free to play and offer more useful/cosmetic items through Station Cash. As it is now, it's just going to bring in a massive amount of trolls and griefers that may scare away the current population.

[Faisca]

I got the impression you won't be able to log into your old account in EQ Live unless you re-subscribe. I think the F2P model they announced is meant for new accounts only.

[dikain]

I think that EQ is turning F2P around march or so

[Deadmantis]

The "threat" to P99 population by EQlive going free to play has been brought up before. As others have mentioned in this thread, their F2P model sucks and in order to play your old characters you will need to resubscribe.

Besides all of that, did anyone else get to play there for free when Sony opened it's time locked progression servers, Fippy and Vulak? They tried to put a classic paint job on their milked out cash cow, and bring back old players. It did not work for me. It was there that I heard about P99. I never resubscribed as some others did, I came here instead.

This is as close to classic as you can get, and it really is free to play.

[Ikonoclastia]

EQ has been dying since luclin. Although, it's been damn slow about it :P
I liked Luclin, minus the Vah Shir. Some of the zones n mobs I found really interesting. Like that swarmcaller n his mates and those floatie black guys. I think luclin fit into eq.

PoP on the other hand, portals, dye, instances, keying, aas. . . left that shite in protest,n never went back

[Swish]

I liked Luclin, minus the Vah Shir.


No doubt that Iksar were the best add-on race, but Vah Shir were light years ahead of Frogloks and that weird dragonkin(?) type race. Frogloks particularly looked ridiculous, players wanted the old guk frogloks, not some weird special olympics variety....

[Nirgon]

Live EQ is v.bad.

Call me insane but I think PoP fit more into EQ than Luclin. Dyes, way high stat inflation and even more AA's being part of the snowball that destroyed the game for me.

[acid_reflux]

The "threat" to P99 population by EQlive going free to play has been brought up before. As others have mentioned in this thread, their F2P model sucks and in order to play your old characters you will need to resubscribe.

Besides all of that, did anyone else get to play there for free when Sony opened it's time locked progression servers, Fippy and Vulak? They tried to put a classic paint job on their milked out cash cow, and bring back old players. It did not work for me. It was there that I heard about P99. I never resubscribed as some others did, I came here instead.

This is as close to classic as you can get, and it really is free to play.

The time locked servers sucked badly. I did not enjoy my time there. The low end zones rapidly became ghost towns. People "zerged" through content way too fast. Basically a d2 ladder race to get credit for first completion. Hated it. Ebayed titanium and deleted the live installs.

[Sorrow*qc]

i know a guy who still play, a lot of ppl don't want to quit the game with all the time/marriage/kids/money they invested